


roots in my lungs, blooms on my tongue

by Chaos_Greymistchild



Category: Bleach
Genre: Blood and Gore, Character Death, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Mild Gore, Tragedy, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 16:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21831526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaos_Greymistchild/pseuds/Chaos_Greymistchild
Summary: Astilbes, dahlias, and Queen Anne’s Lace. Patience, devotion, sanctuary.
Relationships: Kurosaki Ichigo/Urahara Kisuke
Comments: 12
Kudos: 118
Collections: UraIchi Prompt Challenge #4





	roots in my lungs, blooms on my tongue

**Author's Note:**

> UraIchi Prompt Challenge #4; prompt 55. Saudade
> 
> Saudade — a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return. 
> 
> Nothing explicit re tags, but do mind them -- they're there for a reason
> 
> Flower meanings/symbolism in end notes

It starts innocuous. Or as innocuous as illness in an unliving being like a shinigami can be. Unliving? Anyone could make an argument for living, but Kisuke prefers to call it unliving, a living after death that can be unraveled to death once more…

On the first day, it’s a hitch in his lungs, barely there but for the way he can’t quite seem to breathe properly, like there’s something hard and cold nested there. The next week, he was sprawled over a toilet, shaky-limbed and disbelieving as a single petal swam in the water.

He’s made constantly aware of that spot under his sternum, solid and so icy it burnt. Kisuke fished out the next petal he coughs up and runs tests on it. Astilbe. There didn’t seem to be any specific species. Or maybe it didn’t exist except for in his lungs. Kisuke doubted that the vibrant, sunset orange shade truely existed.

As soon as it wasn’t needed anymore, he burnt it.

Not that that did anything in the grand scheme of things.

Closed blooms were clawing their way up his ravaged throat a month after that.

He learns to live with it.

Flowery perfumes to conceal the sickly scent of blood and astilbes — and dahlias when they begin to sprout from his lungs as well. He masters discrete kaidou without the characteristic diffusion of green light. He creates new kido that lets him perform mini surgeries on himself. He burns the flowers that spill from his lungs and throat, then cleans and keeps them in a vase when they unfurl and grow stems. He hopes that Ichigo — that Kurosaki — will understand his silent confession. He doesn’t want Ichigo to only accept him to save him.

After a year, the toll the deadly flowers have had on his body make themselves slowly clear, despite all his efforts to mitigate the damage with kaidou. He stutters in combat, stamina falling like a stone. His lungs are permanently seized and torn. That spot had grown and grown and burned through his upper torso. His throat stops healing well. He stops eating oranges, drank his tea cold, avoided foods that seemed plain to everyone else.

Ichigo — _Kurosaki_ — sometimes looks at him oddly, and he restrains himself from touching his lips to check if he hadn’t wiped off all the blood. He deliberately breathes as deeply and regularly as he can and holds in his pain.

Ichigo never says anything. He must have noticed. These days it’s all he can do to keep the flowers in his throat until Ichigo leaves and he spits Queen Anne’s Lace, blood, and hunks of his own throat and lungs onto the table. The white flowers are stained so red it takes a long time to clean them up to be presentable. Tessai stares judgement into his skull while he cleans the table. Kisuke just lays his head against the cool surface of the table for a moment longer, blood dribbling past his lips, before he heaves himself up and begins the familiar process of healing himself again.

After all, there is no time to be dallying, not when they’re on the brink of war again.

He’s blind, he’s melting from the inside out, his flowers are piling up at the base of his throat, straining at the cage of his flesh.

“Bankai,” he chokes out past the blooms on his tongue, “Kannonbiraki Benihime Aratame.”

Benihime is a welcome presence at his back, even as he retches the bouquet onto the ground.

Askin lets out a little noise of curiosity. He laughs as much as he can, hand against to his throat in a silent application of kaidou. With his other, Kisuke offers the bouquet he spat out.

“Astilbes, dahlias, and Queen Anne’s Lace,” he tells the quincy once his throat has healed enough to speak again, “Patience, devotion, and sanctuary. This is what Ichigo is to me.”

He doesn’t say anything else, just begins to unweave all that is Askin. He unlaces his own body so that his throat and lungs gape open and flowers fall in a rain, pure and unaccompanied by blood.

He rips open the fragile shell that is Askin’s ‘Gift Ball Deluxe’ beneath his Benihime’s power, and Grimmjow crushes Askin’s heart in his hand. Askin pulls out one last trick from his sleeve, one that he’s prepared for. Badly, but his answer is coming.... One last rain of petals lands in his lap and he sews himself whole again.

It doesn’t matter either way. He’ll die here, choked by fatal, unnatural, sunset blooms.

Kisuke can’t help but think that it’s fitting that the only thing he’ll die resigned for, is love.

He can hear Ichigo’s racing footsteps. He has nothing to offer but the bouquet still held limply in his fingers.

Patience, devotion, sanctuary.

**Author's Note:**

> Astilbe for “I’ll still be waiting” and “patience and dedication to a loved one”. I thought it was rather fitting for Kisuke’s unblinking devotion even when he thought that Ichigo would never reciprocate and his unwavering patience, waiting for as long as he needed for Ichigo to realise, even if it meant waiting until his literal dying breath. Not to mention that despite looking super delicate and soft, they’re apparently surprisingly hardy! It was also such a beautiful representation of hanahaki in itself — to wait for forever if necessary, always loyal.
> 
> Dahlias were chosen for their irony, as well as being a brilliant representation of Ichigo himself. “They symbolize inner strength, change, and dignity. They are also known to represent one who stands strong in [his] sacred values.” If that ain’t Ichigo, I’m not sure what else is. “these flowers were believed to be an indication of personal sentiments. They meant commitment, or an everlasting bond or union” Ah, the painful irony. Dahlias also have negative meanings, such as “betrayal, instability, and dishonesty”, which can be taken as to how Kisuke views himself in this situation. Kisuke-being-unable-to-see-his-positive-qualities is not an uraichi trope for nothing.
> 
> Queen Anne’s Lace was chosen for its meaning of “sanctuary”. The white flowers have a single spot of red on them, said to represent the blood of Queen Anne when she pricked herself while making lace, causing a single drop of blood to fall on the lace. 
> 
> I was originally going to use the single plant, bindweed, before I found out that it didn’t have any blooms and couldn’t be used for hanahaki ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
